Tag: William Binney

All invited to open forum at Allard School of Law at University of British Columbia.

William Binney, NSA whistleblower

In the late 1990s William Binney, a top US National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence official, led the development of ThinThread, a sophisticated signals intelligence system with built-in encryption technology allowing the NSA to collect and analyze communications data without violating privacy laws. Around the time of the September 11 attacks, ThinThread was shelved in favour of the Trailblazer Project, a wasteful, inefficient alternative with no privacy protections.

Binney left the NSA and blew the whistle in an effort to hold the agency accountable for waste and corruption, as well as for illegal and unconstitutional spying on the US population. For doing so, he was harassed and undermined, and further development of his technologies was suppressed.

Today, he advocates worldwide for the adoption of “smart selection,” a disciplined, focused intelligence method that protects citizens’ privacy rights.

Hear Bill Binney speak at free noon-hour forum

Don’t miss this Thursday March 14, 2019 noon-hour event honouring legendary whistleblower William Binney – at Franklin Lew Forum, Allard Hall at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. (RSVP here)

An audience Q&A will follow Binney’s telling of his fascinating and troubling story of the surveillance state, individuals’ rights to privacy, and what it means to blow the whistle on a powerful government agency.

FBI Raid on William Binney’s home

After retiring from the NSA, Binney founded, together with fellow NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe, Entity Mapping, LLC, a private intelligence agency to market their analysis program to government agencies

In September 2002, Binney, along with J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis, asked the U.S. Defense Department Inspector General (DoD IG) to investigate the NSA for allegedly wasting “millions and millions of dollars” on Trailblazer, a system intended to analyze mass collection of data carried on communications networks such as the Internet.

Binney was one of several people investigated as part of an inquiry into a 2005 The New York Times exposé on the agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program. Binney was cleared of wrongdoing after three interviews with FBI agents beginning in March 2007, but in early July 2007, in an unannounced, armed, early morning raid, a dozen agents armed with rifles appeared at his house, one of whom entered the bathroom and pointed his gun at Binney, who was taking a shower.

The FBI confiscated a desktop computer, disks, and personal and business records. The NSA revoked his security clearance, forcing him to close a business he ran with former colleagues at a loss of a reported $300,000 in annual income. The FBI raided the homes of Wiebe and Loomis, as well as House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark, the same morning.

The Edward Snowden Connection

Several months later the FBI raided the home of then still active NSA executive Thomas Andrews Drake who had also contacted DoD IG, but anonymously with confidentiality assured. The Assistant Inspector General, John Crane, in charge of the Whistleblower Program, suspecting his superiors provided confidential information to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), challenged them, was eventually forced from his position, and subsequently himself became a public whistleblower. The punitive treatment of Binney, Drake, and the other whistleblowers also led Edward Snowden to go public with his revelations rather than report through the internal whistleblower program. (Above sections starting with ‘FBI Raid on William Binney’s Home’ copied from Wikipedia Binney Article)